


The Hunting of the Horn

by twitchbell



Category: Robin of Sherwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-16
Updated: 2010-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-09 11:41:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchbell/pseuds/twitchbell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ancient hunting horn is uncovered in Sherwood, and those who own it appear willing to go to extreme lengths to reclaim their property.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hunting of the Horn

He found it lying by the smoking ruin of a lightning blasted tree. Half buried amidst the tangled roots and encrusted with earth, it seemed at first to be no more than a crude clay pot, unwanted and forgotten.

And then there was a gleam as a ray of fitful spring sunshine glanced upon it and, wondering, he turned back. He knelt, scrabbled at the roots for a few seconds, and finally tore it loose.

It was no pot he had uncovered. Nor was it made of clay. As he brushed the dirt away with one sleeve, he saw that it was metal, and the metal had a dull yellow sheen to it that drew an answering glimmer from his own eyes.

Clutching it in both hands, he scurried down to the banks of the nearby river and dipped it, carefully now, into the fast-flowing waters, cleansing the metalled surface of the encrusted earth of long years.

A golden horn, such as lords might use out hunting, the whole studded in jewels, blinking up at him now like a myriad tiny rainbow eyes. It was beautiful, wrought and fashioned in painstaking and delicate detail, but he saw none of that. Poor as he was, it spoke to him only of untold riches. It meant that neither he nor his family would want for food again.

Smiling, he polished the glittering surface on his jerkin and then, caught by a desire that he would never after have been able to explain, he raised the horn to his lips...

\------

The outlaws came to Kelleth as dusk fell, slipping silent as shadows into the hut of the village headman, Alan. A thin-faced man with tired eyes, and hands rubbed red and raw from years spent toiling on the land, he had always kept a welcome for them. But this time, although he had summoned them, he greeted them without trace of a smile, remaining grim and silent as they filed inside.

In response to the look of query in Robin's dark eyes, he gestured to a covered shape at the rear of the hut. Robin crossed over to it, the others close behind him, and tugged back the coarse woollen blanket.

Nasir and Scarlet remained impassive. Tuck crossed himself, murmuring a soft prayer under his breath. John's and Marion's faces were grave, Much's frightened. Robin's own eyes were troubled as he drew the blanket back over the corpse and turned to Alan.

"Who is he?" Little John asked, breaking the silence.

"Ralph. He farmed here, he and his family."

"How did it happen?" Robin questioned.

Alan shook his head, not dismissively but helplessly. "We don't know. Tom, the miller's lad, found him by the river like that. Not a mark on him, nothing, only..."

"Summat got 'im all right," Will muttered, recollecting the look on the man's face.

"Fear," Nasir muttered darkly.

"Oh yeah? Fear of what?" Will demanded, but Nasir only shrugged, clearly at a loss for an answer.

"Frightened to death," said Robin bitterly. Marion glanced across at him, recognising the note of anger in his voice. Herne knew that death was a daily occurrence in Sherwood as elsewhere, but this fatality was both unnatural and inexplicable. To Robin, that spelt failure in his allotted task as protector of these people. She touched his arm lightly.

"What could he have seen in Sherwood to frighten him so much?" she asked.

"I don't know, but we'll find out," Robin vowed, striding to the door. "I promise you that much, Alan."

"Wait." Alan's voice held him back. "There's one more thing you should see before you go." He hesitated then as they all turned to face him once more, and they wondered at his reluctance as he crossed slowly over to the corpse and drew a shining object from under the blanket. "Ralph had this on him when we found him. Clutching it, he was. We couldn't get it free..." He swallowed hard and then handed the item quickly to Robin as if having decided to relinquish it, he was frightened to remain in possession of it for any longer.

"It's beautiful." Marion's eyes drank in the delicate spiral of the horn, noting how the elaborate tracery of fine carvings and inlaid jewels did not detract from its design, but rather enhanced the perfection of the whole. She reached out one hand and smoothed a finger over the raised surface with a shiver of delight.

"It's evil," Alan rebuked sharply. "I ought not to have given it to you. I was going to take it far from here, bury it somewhere safe."

"Bury it!" Will couldn't refrain from comment at that. "It's worth a fortune!"

Alan rounded on him with surprising vehemence. "What use is a fortune to a dead man? No doubt Ralph had ideas on how to use its wealth, and where did it get him? We had to break his fingers to free him from it! It's evil, I tell you, and we should leave it well alone."

Will opened his mouth to fling back a derisive answer to this outburst, but Robin forestalled him, putting a warning hand on his shoulder and looking across at Alan.

"You can trust me with it," he said. "Herne will guide me."

Alan stared at him, still doubtful and obviously afraid. And then he nodded, a little of the tension draining from him.

"Very well. Take it. If any man can hold it in safety, I believe it to be you, Robin I' the Hood."

\------

They left Kelleth as quietly as they had come, moving swiftly off into the night-darkened forest. Robin led them as always, knowing with unerring instinct the quickest and safest paths to take that led to the secret places deep in the heart of Sherwood. While they walked, they had plenty of time to consider what they had heard and seen.

"It's a load of bollocks," Will declared, following up his considered opinion with a scowl.

"Is it?" Robin weighed the horn thoughtfully in one hand. "Alan's not an overly superstitious man, but he was frightened."

"And he was right, you know," Tuck said. "Some things are better left alone."

Much's face still wore a look of anxiety. He tugged at Robin's arm. "You didn't oughta keep it, Robin. It's dangerous. Throw it away," he urged.

"For some other poor unfortunate to find? I don't think so," Robin returned decisively.

John nodded his agreement. "If Alan's right, then the last thing we should do is throw it away."

"Evil!" Will was still not convinced, and his face expressed his disgust. "You surely don't believe in all that superstitious nonsense?"

"I thought you knew better, Will." Robin stopped suddenly and swung round. His voice held a challenge as he forced Scarlet's gaze and held it. "Superstitious nonsense? Like de Belleme? And the witch, Morgwyn? You know such evil exists in this world – why try and deny it? And this –" he held out the horn "- taken from a dead man's grasp... you saw Ralph of Kelleth's face. How did he die? Can you tell me that, Will?"

"Could be coincidence," Will muttered, still reluctant to accept what Robin was saying. "Finding the horn, and dying like that ... needn't be connected at all, need it?"

"I don't trust coincidence," Robin said.

"You will be careful, won't you, Robin?" Much pleaded. He eyed the horn fearfully, far from reassured by the conversation.

"I'll be careful," Robin promised gently.

"What will you do with it?" Marion asked.

Robin slipped the hunting horn into his belt. "Tomorrow I'll take it to Herne. He'll know the truth of it.

\------

The embers of the small fire the outlaws had lit for heat and protection during the night had faded to a dull glow, a circle of warmth in the depths of the shadow-shrouded forest. The world was silent and still, save for the sounds of night creatures as they foraged for food. Yet Marion, huddled beside Robin, still lay sleepless, and her eyes were drawn not to the fire, but to the moon. It seemed to her that it shone bright as the sun, and once her gaze was caught, she could not look away from where it hung amongst the branches of the trees, a shining disc lending its argent glow to all it touched.

Robin stirred softly in his sleep, pulling away from her and dragging with him the rough blanket that covered them both. And as if it had been waiting for this chance, the moonlight lit upon the hunting horn he still bore and outlined each perfect detail in luminous silver.

Clearly unwilling to let anyone else touch it – whether from curiosity or pure defiance – Robin had refused to remove it from his belt, preferring to wait until its true nature was known. But, trusting, he had overlooked one possibility. Only half-aware of what she did, Marion let one hand drift down to touch the hunting horn.

For a few moments, she did nothing more than idly caress the hard, gleaming surface, but then she found herself gently sliding it free from Robin's belt, driven by an impulse she couldn't even begin to comprehend. Robin stirred again, and she caught her breath, releasing it in a soft sigh as he lay still once more. He was curled on his side, facing away from her, and making her task of leaving unobserved that much easier. Scarcely making a sound, Marion rose to her feet and passed between her sleeping companions. Not one of them stirred.

She walked lightly and quickly, soft and silent as a forest creature herself, selecting her path on instinct alone. There was no reason in what she did. She wasn't conscious of her actions at all. Something outside her guided her steps now, and that force impelled her onwards for purposes that were entirely its own.

At length, Marion came to a halt in a small natural clearing where the moonlight shone down unimpeded, creating a pool of brilliant light on the grass covered earth. She moved under the rays, shook back her hair, and lifted the hunting horn to her lips.

Sound spilled from it, falling pure and clear as rainwater yet with so great a melancholy that Marion found herself wrenched abruptly free from her entrancement. Like a sleeper newly wakened, she was left standing, heart racing, the horn still clasped in her hands.

The toll of uncounted years had been in that call, and its echoes circled her still, sounding hollow and thin in her ears. And then she realised that they weren't echoes at all, but other horns, answering.

_Answering_...

\------

Robin was jarred awake by the horn call, one hand slipping to his belt. With a muffled curse, he leapt to his feet as he found the hunting horn missing. It was only then that he registered another absence. _Marion_...

The others had woken too, but were slower to piece together what had happened. By the time the sequence of events became clear to them, Robin had already gone, racing between the trees at breakneck speed. He ran without pause for breath or thought, leaping the great tree roots that seemed to almost deliberately bar his way, and all the while the horn call echoed in his mind.

_Marion_.

He came upon her at last, crumpled and unmoving amidst a pool of cold moonlight, and then he threw himself to his knees beside her. Drawing her into his arms and desperately calling her name, he stared down at her face. His panic abated slightly as he realised that she was still breathing, and that her features bore no such look of terror as had so disfigured Ralph of Kelleth. More gently now, he shook her and called her name again, soft and insistent.

"Marion!"

This time, her eyelashes flickered, and then her eyes opened. She stared up at Robin, her dazed expression slowly clearing.

"It's all right," she said weakly. "_I'm_ all right."

As if still seeking to reassure himself of that fact, Robin continued to hold her to him, his eyes urgently searching for the object she'd brought here.

"The horn," he said at last. "Where is it?"

"Where it belongs." Marion, still pale, but rapidly recovering strength, struggled to sit up.

"What made you take it?" Robin demanded harshly, and Marion understood what depth of feeling prompted his anger.

"I don't know. I think perhaps _they_ wanted me to bring it here."

"They? Who?"

"I'm not sure." Marion shivered, and Robin held her closer, feeling her heart race at the memory of what she'd witnessed. He looked up as the others crashed into the clearing, urgency and concern overcoming customary stealth and caution.

"You all right?" John demanded of Marion, coming to a ragged halt before them. She nodded.

"You took it, didn't you?" Will accused, his eyes scouring the clearing, much as Robin's had done, for any trace of what she'd appropriated.

"Yes," Marion admitted. "I took the horn. I called them, and they came."

"They?" Tuck crossed over to her, unconsciously echoing Robin's earlier question. "Who are _they_, little flower?"

Marion hesitated, as if the words to describe what she had seen and heard were all but impossible to come by. They waited for her answer, watching her face. "I can't explain exactly," she said at last. "I found it... difficult to look directly at them. I sensed rather than saw."

"Why? Ugly brutes, were they?" Will scowled.

"Not at all." Marion shook her head. "They were beautiful... fair beyond our understanding. And they were old, so very _old_. They were here long before us, and they called this land their own long before any of our ancestors walked here."

Much sat down beside her. "How d'you know all that?" he said, sounding both uncertain and amazed.

"I just do," Marion returned simply. Then, as Tuck crossed himself, she added, "No, don't. They're not evil. Not in themselves."

"The horn belonged to them." From Nasir, a statement rather than a question, but Marion answered it anyway.

"Yes. They made it long ago. It was precious to them, and they wanted it back."

"Yeah, and they killed Ralph for it," Will said bitterly.

Marion shook her head. "It was Ralph's own fear that killed him. He couldn't understand or accept what he saw, what he felt."

"But you could," said Robin.

"Yes. I don't know how or why, but I knew what they wanted. So I gave them the horn. Then they left." She rested her head on Robin's shoulder, and closed her eyes. She told it so simply, but they couldn't doubt that the experience itself had been one of high emotion.

"You liked it," Much said suddenly. "The horn. You said it was beautiful."

"Of course." Robin's expression softened. "Much sees the truth of it. Who else could they choose to return their treasure to them but you?"

"So where are these very old folk now, then?" Will prowled the clearing, hand on sword, radiating aggressive suspicion.

"Oh, they're still here," Marion said calmly. "In Sherwood. It's just that we can't see them. Not unless they want us to."

"Oh aye?" John looked askance at this, but Tuck nodded, a look of considering appraisal on his face.

"I think I begin to understand," he said. "The Hidden Folk – call them what you will. I never thought there'd come a day when I'd find a grain of truth in those old tales."

"Hidden Folk?" Will echoed, and narrowed his eyes. "If you're meanin' what I think you're meanin'..." He left the sentence incomplete. Robin hid a smile. The vision of Will lost for words was a rare one, and one to be savoured.

"There's truth in all the old tales, Tuck," he said.

"It's just that sometimes we lose sight of it for a while," Marion added as Robin took her hand and drew her with him to their feet. "Nothing is ever really forgotten."

Robin held her close to him. "Legends last forever," he said.

 

The End


End file.
